1884: The World Debut of a Railroad Executive

July 24, 1884

Wilson McCarthy, who achieved widespread prominence as a railroad executive, was born in the city of American Fork in what was then the Territory of Utah. McCarthy worked in various settings as a cowboy (boots and western wear became his lifelong standard attire), attorney, judge, and banker before his deep immersion in the world of transportation began in earnest. This took place in 1935 when he was appointed a co-trustee of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad (also known as the Rio Grande) after that company had petitioned for reorganization under the Federal Bankruptcy Act.

McCarthy worked with his fellow trustee Henry Swan to revitalize the Rio Grande and, under their administration, that railroad built more than 1,130 bridges and put down at least two million ties. By the end of World War II in 1945, the Rio Grande’s annual revenues had grown from $17 million to $75 million; in 1942 alone, those revenues jumped by a whopping 905 percent. The Rio Grande emerged from co-trusteeship in 1947. Under the reorganization plan approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission, McCarthy was named the Rio Grande’s president.

McCarthy died on February 12, 1956, in Salt Lake City. The Colorado-based Daily Sentinel noted a couple of days later, “One of the most remarkable and successful programs of rehabilitation and modernization of a large railway system ever carried out in the west, if not in the whole country, is to be credited largely to one man — Wilson McCarthy, known familiarly as Judge Wilson McCarthy.” On the day of McCarthy’s funeral, every Rio Grande train stopped at 11:00 a.m. and each of their crews observed two minutes of silence. 

(The above photo of McCarthy was taken in 1919.)

Photo Credit: Public Domain

Additional information on Wilson McCarthy is available at https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv638100 and https://denversrailroads.com/DRGW.htm